I've been hearing from some on email that they are dealing with ignorant payroll departments stealing their money on nothing more than a mere Notice of Levy from the IRS. Instead of sending this out each and every time, I took my most recent correspondence (minus a few personal thing) to put out some thoughts on dealing with this. Please feel free to add to this.
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The biggest problem at this point is not the IRS, but your employer, who mistakenly believes that a simple notice from the IRS is all that is needed to take your wages.
I'm not sure what state you are in, but I know for my own, the state statutes very clearly state that no part of anyone's earnings shall be withheld apart from a summons of garnishment arising from a court order. My state posted its statute codes online, so I took an evening or two doing searches on 'garnishment'.
Now that your employer has started, it may be harder than when they first receive the notice. In my case, if that is what happens (which I think unlikely in my case), I know my employer's payroll dept would contact me immediately. Were you contacted before or after they started stealing your money? Did you get a copy of the notice? Did it have a signature on it? Did you get any kind of warning letters before this started?
I would probably first go to the payroll dept and politely inform them of the errors that are probably apparently. If there is no name or signature, I would point this out and ask them to please stop withholding until the taxman provides a form of identification as any kid with a printer can print out an order like this. Who knows? You may have been a victim of identity fraud?
Also, assuming there is no court order, you should probably point out that they stop their withholding until they get the proper authorization from the court order authorizing wage garnishment that the IRS obviously forgot. You wouldn't want them to be withholding in error. That would make them liable for monies lost if they were doing this without court authorization. You may want to follow this path up by going to the county recorder and requesting a copy of any court order in the public record against you. They might just have only the notice which isn't a court order.
You might also want to go to the county court house or perhaps even the local federal courthouse in your district and ask them to do a search for any court orders on record against you. If they can't find one, then prepare an affidavit for them to sign and either have two witnesses or a notary on hand to notorize that there wasn't one on record.
I would take this to your employer, and let them know that they are withholding without a court order. They could be held personally (the business or the person who honored it) responsible. I believe the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act holds some stiff penalties for violations. You should ask in the suijuris forum about this as some of them (Ice and others) know more about the FDCPA and the unauthorized withholding by the employer.
If the employees rush back to their corporate lawyers to do all of the thinking for them, then your options start to narrow. You may need to inform them that what they are doing is following an illegal path. You should check out the decision in Williamson Vs Boulder Dam Credit Union. The IRS used a Notice of Levy, with no court order, to get a guy's credit union to illegally withhold his funds. The court sided with the man against both the bank and the IRS, as the bank had a contractual obligation to him to protect his interests as they were his fiduciary. The same sort of thing applies to an employer:
Williamson VS Boulder Dam Credit Union
If they still cower down, then you may need to contact your state labor board and ask about employers sending money off to debt collectors without a court order. Tax collectors are just specialized debt collectors. They may hesitate a little if they find out it is the IRS, but hold them to it. Your family's interests are at stake.
Also, you really should consider a lawsuit, if all else fails. It may be tough to find someone to help, but not impossible. Also, you need to look up the rules on withholding. There is a percentage limit to what can be withheld for levies as well. You might want to inform them of this, as I'm sure they are taking almost all of it. This can lessen the burden until they release it. I'm not sure what the limit is, but I'm thinking it was 15 or 25%. Also, look around for "hardship withholding". Your situation might be covered.
Oh, here's something:
31 USC Sec. 3720D
(b) In carrying out any garnishment of disposable pay of an individual under subsection (a), the head of an executive, judicial, or legislative agency shall comply with the following
requirements:
(1) The amount deducted under this section for any pay period may not exceed 15 percent of disposable pay, except that a greater percentage may be deducted with the written consent of the individual.
You could also just try to work something out with the IRS if fighting is something you don't want to do. The excessive amount might just be to browbeat you into submission. I personally would just quit and find another job, but you have a family to consider, so I can't advise you. I'm single and moving is easier for me. You and your family are the ones who have to pick and choose your battles. For some people, they feel they have to do this, in order to save their marriage or something else.
These are only suggestions. I would check
The Family Guardian Site, for more information.
I used their search engine on their site to come up with great stuff when searching on "garnish". Read this one especially:
Careful omission of who can be garnished
You'll be shocked.
Here are just a few more from my brief search:
link #1
link #2
link #3
link #4
link #5
Plus all of the wonderful resources on this site.
Hope these help you start on your journey. You and your families are in my prayers. Go talk to the guys at suijuris.net. Go read up as much as possible on the famguardian site. If possible, get your money out of bank and other unsafe sites. Stop using your SSN, that's how they track you. Set up a trust or an anonymous New Mexico or Indiana LLC, and start transferring things out of your name. Get a trusted friend or family member who isn't on the IRS watchlist to open an account for your use (with your money, of course), and get your car and house out of your name.
Start using money orders for bill payments. Open an e-gold account and get an online debit card to draw from the account to use like a credit card. Open a paypal account and get one of their debit cards, no SSN required. Anytime someone asks for your SSN, try to politely steer them away from this. The privacy act of 1974 makes it a crime to ask for this and not provide a service, unless the services is directly related to taxes or social security.
Finally, help others who are struggling with the taxman. The problem many of us feel is that we are all alone. Fact is, millions are battling them. The trick is to appear to be "not worth it" by being too hard to track or prosecute. They win when we give in too easy.
Take care,
